


Sunshines

by SpellCleaver



Series: Love Is Not Enough [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Family, Gen, Introspection, Memories, Skywalker Family Drama, Tragedy, Trauma, reflections
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 19:23:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12564460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpellCleaver/pseuds/SpellCleaver
Summary: Luke Skywalker, who was never called anything else, lost his family twice. This is what he remembers of them.





	Sunshines

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion piece to another work in this series, Sweetheart.

Luke Skywalker, who was never called anything else, lost his family twice. This is what he remembers of them.

A child's daydream of a father to be proud of, of ships streaking through the stars, of laughter and joy once the dead return. _It's okay, Luke, I was lost for so long, but I'm back now and we'll be happy together. You'll see._

(White curtains fluttering in the corner of his vision and the image of a young girl with braided hair in the mirror, but that's not right because the homestead is underground they don't _have_ curtains and who's that little girl anyway?)

Uncle Owen telling him that he's too young to help with the vaporators, that he'll get lost or hurt or sunburnt or abducted, and Aunt Beru chiming in with a knowing look at his uncle and saying that they love him too much to risk losing him in such a way. He can help around on the farm when he's older; for now, he can play with a T-16 model in the cool homestead in the shade where it's nice and safe.

(Sometimes he steps into a certain room and a certain conversation - _I killed them all_ \- plays in his mind, but he ignores it. It's just heatstroke, he's sure. _They're like animals. And I slaughtered them like animals_.)

He and Biggs sneaking away to Mos Espa on their own one day, and strolling through the streets with perhaps less caution than would be advised. Biggs buying them both snacks and their expressions darkening when they walk past the slave quarters. Luke suddenly finding himself not hungry, and leaving in a hurry.

( _I'm free!_ shouts a child's voice. _That's wonderful, Ani_. In later years, Luke would still understand the incessant urge he receives then to move away from the object of the memories.)

An unmarked grave at the back of the farm, and Aunt Beru whispering that it's his grandmother there, hat she was killed by Tuskens, that he must never ever go out into the desert at night because she and Uncle Owen couldn't bear to lose him in the same way. Luke starting to grow small plants - cacti, other desert-dwelling flora - around the gravestone, and always keeping it clean of sand. He keeps this up until the day he leaves.

( _I wasn't strong enough to save you,_ says a voice he should know. A voice belonging to a man who knelt exactly where he kneels now, speaking to exactly the same grave. _But, I promise. . . I won't fail again_. Luke cannot shake the foreboding that follows him around after he hears the last few words.)

Ben Kenobi walking around Anchorhead one day, and Uncle Owen pointedly steering Luke away before they run into him. Luke jostling to see past his uncle's robes and peer at the man who everyone calls _just a crazy old wizard_ , and for a moment he swears the Old Ben was staring at him before hastily looking away.

(He doesn't think about the other impression he got, of a vaguely irritated, drawled _Why do I sense we've picked up another pathetic life form?_ swiftly followed by a sharp pain and a _You were my brother, Anakin! I loved you!_ )

Luke asking his aunt and uncle who his mother was, when he is still young and doesn't understand what topics are taboo and what aren't, 'cause he knows his father was a navigator on a spice freighter but Biggs says you can't have a baby without a mother, so I musta hadda mother, right Uncle Owen? His uncle telling him to be quiet and drink his bantha milk.

(A single dream, swiftly forgotten along with a million others, of a brown-eyed, brown-haired woman in imposing makeup and a regal headdress. Maybe if he'd ever seen her without the makeup, without the headdress, he would have seen the similarities between her nose and his, her eyes and the eyes of that girl he sometimes gets flashes of, but he never saw, so he never did.)

Biggs standing in front of him, freshly returned from the Imperial Academy, and saying that _The Rebellion is a long way from here_.

(Extreme terror, and shots of red and rings of blue and he wants to make it better, he _should_ make it better, so he reaches out with all the positivity he can muster and he hopes it does some good.)

An old wizard - no, _Jedi_ \- a beautiful girl who looks far too familiar, two droids and the promise of adventure, but Uncle Owen needs him, he needs to stay on another season-

( _First step? Spring the trap._ )

A burning homestead and two skeletons left under the sun and a scream that may be his or may be the desert's high keening for her lost children or maybe there is no scream at all.

( _Alderaan. . . Not Alderaan. . ._ )

Old Ben, the droids, and the corpses of Jawas are all that's remaining from the life he lived.

**.**

Ben is dead, Biggs is dead, and he is alone.

**.**

Leia speaking to him when he confesses to his nightmares, her soothing words insisting _it's okay to be not okay_.

Han coming out into the snows on Hoth for him, even though it could just kill the smuggler too.

Chewie roaring and hugging him when they're primed to take off into the Battle of Hoth.

Dak and Hobbie and Zev fighting and dying during that same battle. That same conflict. That same war.

The feeling of intense relief as he sees the _Millennium Falcon_ soar out of the hangar and past the blockade.

Wedge shouting _We'll meet you at the rendezvous point!_

Yoda showing moments of rare kindness during his training which, if Luke didn't know any better, he might call affection.

Ben begging him not to go, not to rush to help his friends, because _I don't want to lose you the way I lost Vader_.

The sight of Cloud City emerging on his scopes, and the ironclad determination that seizes him.

**.**

A burning in his hand - or lack thereof.

( _I hate you!_ )

The feeling of wind rushing past his face.

( _I hate it when he does that._ )

The sight of the blue lightsaber blade falling and falling and falling. . .

( _This weapon is your life_.)

Ben's tired face in front of him. A part of him saying, _I'm sorry, Ben, I didn't Fall, I just. . . fell_ and the rest of him screaming, _Why didn't you tell me?_

( _Why do I get the feeling you're going to be the death of me?_ )

Falling and falling and falling and falling and falling and falling and _falling_. . .

**.**

He meditates, but the truth is inescapable, and the Force is all too keen to show it.

_Darth Vader is my father_

(Yellow eyes glaring at him up a hill, across a fiery plain, across time and space and the eons in between.)

_Darth Vader is my fathe_

(A young man, arrogance in his stance, kneeling before a Chancellor who became an Emperor. He rises.)

_Darth Vader is my fath_

(An image he knows this time, one he's tried to suppress: A young man charging through a Tusken camp, a mother's corpse left behind in the tent, and a blue blade flashing and slashing and heads rolling. . .)

_Darth Vader is my fa_

(A woman he knows and yet has forgotten, heavily pregnant, standing in front of a yacht and pleading with the man. _Anakin, please. . . You're breaking my heart. You're going down a path I can't follow_.)

_Darth Vader is my_

(Two men - one he knows, the other he should - duelling with the sort of hatred that can only be borne of love, and the sparks that their lightsabers spit are only rivalled by the sparks spat by the lava flows burning far, far below.)

_Darth Vader is_

(Agony, writhing agony, and then a man who is more machine now stands for the first time, and Luke thinks he understands now as he hears the words _Where is Padmé? Is she safe? Is she alright?_ and sees how the response destroys the last remaining shreds of humanity inside the suit.)

_Darth Vader_

**.**

_What is it?_ Leia asks. _Ask me later,_ Luke replies.

**.**

_Leave this place._

Luke's entire remaining family is currently on this moon. He will not leave.

What he will do it his utmost to keep his family together, and alive. _Everyone_ in his family. Good and loving and _right_.

When he watches the pyre later that day, he can content himself with knowing that, even if only for a heartbeat, he succeeded.

After all, growing up on Tatooine, a child's daydream of a father to be proud of was everything he ever wanted in the world.

And now he has it.


End file.
